Perfect People

76

On the living-room floor, Luke sat holding a PlayStation joystick in his hand, absorbed in concentration. Phoebe, kneeling beside him, was watching the television screen, equally absorbed, and every few moments giving an urgent command to her brother.

A man in a long cape was climbing a never-ending Gothic stairwell; oak doors opened and closed revealing strange creatures, some scary, some beautiful, some plain weird. Sometimes, at Phoebe’s urgent command, Luke pressed a button and the man ducked. Other times the man did a snap one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn.

Maybe it was her imagination, Naomi wondered, but Dr Sheila Michaelides seemed very definitely to have thawed a little towards her and John. The psychologist was standing unobtrusively at the rear of the room, observing all that was going on, occasionally making a note on a small pad, saying nothing. She’d spent two days at the special needs playschool observing Luke and Phoebe, and now she’d been a fly on the wall all day here.

But at least, she felt, for the first time they were going to get an accurate assessment of their children and, hopefully, some clear advice on how to handle them.

The psychologist stood in the doorway of the bathroom, watching her and John bathe and dry the twins. Luke and Phoebe seemed to accept her presence the way they accepted most things: by ignoring her. To the children, she could have been invisible.

Downstairs, they sat around the kitchen table. Sheila Michaelides put her notepad in front of her, looking uncomfortable. She stirred her coffee then accepted a ginger biscuit from the plate Naomi offered. Then she said, ‘Dr and Mrs Klaesson, I have to tell you I’m extremely concerned about Luke and Phoebe. I think there are some improvements you could make in your own parental roles, but from my observations this is not the root of the problem.’

‘What kind of improvements?’ Naomi demanded defensively.

‘What do you mean by the root of the problem?’ John followed on.

‘Well,’ she said, putting the biscuit down on her plate, and staring pensively for a moment at the steam rising from her cup of coffee, ‘I need some time to think about everything I’ve seen and I would like to talk to some of my colleagues. One immediate observation I have is that you are clearly not getting the levels of love and affection from your children that I would normally expect. There is a tendency for twins to be self-sufficient for much longer than single babies, but Luke and Phoebe are almost three now.’ She hesitated, looking at their faces, then added, ‘They seem cold and very withdrawn, something that ordinarily would signal something wrong with the parenting-’

‘Wrong?’ Naomi cut in. ‘What do you mean by that?’

‘The possibility of abuse,’ Sheila Michaelides responded.

Naomi opened her mouth, about to explode; John gripped her arm. ‘Honey, calm down!’

‘I’m not in any way suggesting this is the case – nothing I’ve seen suggests any maltreatment by you both. I think you are very loving, very caring parents.’

There was a tense silence as she flicked through her notes, looking for something.

‘What exactly do you mean by improvements that we can make in our role as parents?’ Naomi asked.

‘Well, let’s take an instance the first morning I came here, before playschool. You went out of the kitchen and left me alone with them. They showed no fear of me – a total stranger – at all. Children who are well bonded with their parents have a much greater fear of strangers than those who don’t.’

‘But we’ve been trying to bond with them ever since they were born!’ Naomi said.

The psychologist nodded, her worried frown deepening. ‘I think that’s an area where I could give you some guidance. But there are broader problems that I don’t think stem from this lack of bonding.’

Naomi watched her, concerned about the woman’s body language. When they had first gone to see her, she seemed supremely confident to the point of arrogance; but now she looked nervous, toying with the biscuit, playing with her hands, frowning, her whole face tightening up every few minutes as if she was struggling with some inner demon.

‘I’ve seen Luke and Phoebe separately and together. I’ve watched them solving puzzles, and I’ve tried as best as possible, given their lack of verbal communication, to test their memory and reasoning. What I’m finding is that they seem to have an intelligence and skill levels far in advance of their age. They seem at times to be testing everything around them. Most of the time they’re very withdrawn, at other times, they try to assert themselves over everyone they come into contact with – over the other kids in playschool, over you, and as they don’t have any challenge in asserting themselves over their guinea pigs, they taunt them instead, seeing how far they can push them; it’s as if they are constantly testing the endurance levels of everything. I’m having a big problem with their mindsets – they respond to totally different cues to the norm, and they have a different pattern of communication. It is outside of any kind of range I’ve ever experienced.’

‘You mean this strange language they have?’ John asked.

‘That’s part of it. I was sceptical when you first told me about it, now I’m beginning to believe it.’

‘How do you explain it?’ John said.

‘For them to be so wrapped up with each other that they rarely respond to either of you, and never to other children, and to have these unique skills, is symptomatic of autism. I had dismissed that previously, but that is one possibility I would now like to explore. I’m going to suggest that we should have brain scans done.’

‘Autism?’ Naomi said, horrified. ‘You really think they might be autistic?’

‘I’m afraid it is one possibility. Clearly there is something going on that we need to diagnose.’

Naomi looked at John. He squeezed her hand.

The psychologist went on, ‘There are very primitive perceptual systems in the brain that recognize and respond to patterns of social behaviour. One of the tests I did shows that in Luke and Phoebe this ability is either absent, or programmed differently.’

‘What does that mean exactly?’ John asked.

‘I’m not sure that your children are able to make certain distinctions about some aspects of what constitutes normal behaviour in society.’

John squeezed Naomi’s hand even more tightly and looked at the psychologist. ‘Where do we go from here?’

‘I need time to think about it,’ she said. ‘One option might be for you both to take a break, and let Luke and Phoebe go into a residential psychiatric facility for observation.’

‘Absolutely no way!’ Naomi said, turning to John for confirmation. He looked hesitant for a moment, then nodded in agreement with her.

‘I’m not proposing this as any slight on you as parents,’ she said. ‘If your children are, as I suspect, super-bright and under-stimulated, it might do them good to be in a facility for gifted children. There’s a very good residential facility I could suggest-’

‘I’m sorry,’ Naomi said. ‘That is not an option. It’s out of the question. We’re their parents; whatever problems they may have, we are going to be the ones to get them through it, whatever it takes.’

‘Well, the alternative would be for you to change the activities at home for them. Perhaps design a new regime for them to follow.’

‘Such as?’ John asked.

‘Giving them toys and games that would be appropriate for much older children. I think you should get them a computer – they are fascinated by computers – that’s why they monopolize the one at playschool.’

‘Sheila,’ John said. ‘Give me your honest answer – what would you do if you were in our position – if these were your children?’

‘I need to think about it,’ she said. ‘I need to talk about this with some colleagues – in confidence, of course. I’d like to do some research. I wish I could give you some magic solution, but I can’t; there isn’t one. Life’s not going to be easy for you.’